Chapter Sixty-Three - Latin America: Coups & Cans

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Latin America: Coups & Cans

IF AFRICA WAS stripped for parts, Latin America was played like a casino.

The colonizers left Spanish and Portuguese, Catholicism, and trauma.
But what really lingered was a blueprint:
Exploit the land, control the people, and call it civilization.

From Mexico to Argentina, the 19th century was a blur of wars, revolutions, and rewritten flags.
Empires crumbled, independence flared, and new republics emerged.
But “independent” doesn’t mean “free.”

Power stayed concentrated.
Landowners ruled.
Indigenous voices were silenced.
And behind every curtain?
Foreign companies, banks, and later, CIA operatives.

The United States dubbed it their backyard.
And they mowed the lawn with tanks.

Any whiff of socialism or independence from U.S. business interests
was met with intervention.
Or worse.

Guatemala? Elected a leftist → coup.
Chile? Voted for Allende → Pinochet.
Nicaragua? Civil war and CIA-backed Contras.
Cuba? Tried to resist → blockaded, assassination attempts, and Bay of Pigs.

The Cold War turned the entire region into a battlefield of ideologies, but most of the actual damage was done to the people.

Meanwhile, the drug trade filled the vacuum.

Coca leaves weren’t new.
But demand from the north turned them into an industry.
Cartels took over where the governments failed.
Narco wars became daily life in places like Colombia and Mexico.

And who bought the drugs?
The same people funding the war on them.
A perfect storm of hypocrisy.

But don’t reduce Latin America to tragedy.

It’s also resistance, rhythm, and rebirth.

It’s the Zapatistas in Chiapas,
the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina,
the art of Frida and Diego,
the literature of Márquez and Neruda,
the music, the fútbol, the fire.

It’s generations who know what struggle tastes like and still dance anyway.